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19 September 2008

I got to be on the radio today on a local station 105.9 The Radiator to talk some more about the ART HOP debacle. It was fun. Did you know that today is "National Talk Like A Pirate Day?"

I thought it might have something to do with The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (and as it happens, I was right!) but no one at the station had heard of it, so I got to break that story on the air. Score one for the noodley team!

16 March 2008

Well, it wasn't actually a test, in that there doesn't seem to be any criteria for the result, or at least any information posted about it.

I decided to investigate further. If you remove the "/bb/reading_level.aspx" of the URL link, it takes you here: Critics Rant a site that covers such intellectual subjects as Britney Spears, American Idol and whether the studios will make another Rambo movie (Sly says "no"). Let's just say, I didn't notice any Mensa buttons in the sidebar.

Then I tried it with some other blogs to see how they compare. The two "who shall not be named" on the PYtB Blogroll that I think are the smartest came up "High School". My other blog, The Life of A Garden, scored "Junior HS."

Well, I'm stumped. I can't imagine what they consider smart enough. Actually, I can imagine, because the site I found the silly thing on was considered "Genius," and come to think of it, it is.

Mysterious mysteries abound,

XXKHT

(maybe they mean "elementary" in the Sherlock Holmes sense - as in basic logic...yeah, that's it)

11 March 2008

Anyone who reads this regularly (and I'm pleased and honored that a few of you do) knows that I've been beating back the blue demons of late winter. A few of these past days have been more like Holly Golightly's "mean reds..."

There was nothing for it but to start another blog. For certain I'm crazy to begin one right now, considering I really do need to start looking for traditional employment (outside of the house! - sharp inhale) and I'm doing the NaBloPoMo 31 posts in 31 days challenge here at PYtB.

Who cares?! Bring it!

Besides, I love the garden. I've never been so happy in my life as in that tiny patch of ground. Could it be a prelude to my ultimate future actually in the ground? Who cares if it is. Gardening is as orgasmic as anything - instead of just your body gone euphoric, you're entire being does so.

If you're not a gardener, you probably think I'm exaggerating. Below is a short list of behavioral changes that happen to me in relation to the garden.

In TLoAG, I will attempt to journal one full season as a community gardener - from starting seeds, to planting, maintenance and all the way through food preservation. There will be plenty of recipes as well.

Isn't that just so dang cute? Isn't it? I know, I know.

Maybe I'm bi-polar like my mommy. Only at least in my case, I have an outlet for each of my two halves - Put Yourself to Bedlam for my Cynic with a Sense of Humor and The Life of A Garden for my Hopelessly Hopeful Romantic Do-Gooder Plant Junkie.

29 January 2008

Under a mountain of obfuscated paperwork, I've discovered a kernel of enlightenment:

The reason so many bad artists make it in this world, is because unlike the inherently creative types, these would-bes are able to jump the many hurdles required to get one's work seen by the public.

Furthermore, since exhibitions will occur regardless, the spaces are often filled with the output of only the most diligent paper pushers, and the temperament that allows one to push through the requisite red tape is antithetical to the spontaneous creative spirit.

Additionally, I posit that today's lack of patronage is largely responsible for this phenomena, in that in days when this type of support was commonplace, the artist was left to create the art, while the patrons took care of the promotion. The drawback was that often the artist, his patron and their associates were the only beneficiaries; that is, until the patron died or donated the works to the public (whichever came first).

As is evidenced amidst my current pile of forms, the instructions to join shows (juried or otherwise) are convoluted beyond belief. In one particular case of a juried show, no deadline is set, nor any instructions for submission given (that I can find) other than that the artist is supposed to fill out the paperwork and physically bring the ready to hang piece to the showplace on opening day; at which time, one assumes, they will decide if it's good enough for the show and auction. What then, are they planning to do with the pieces that are deemed unworthy?

The form shows a fee to set a minimum bid, and states that if the artist expects the piece to sell, they should consider submitting works under $500, as that is the anticipated range of the buyers expected to attend.

This puts the artist in a sticky situation. If there's no minimum bid, a piece could end up going for much less than the artist's intended sale price. Add to that the 30% commission, and participants could easily end up giving the piece up for less than they paid to produce it. It's a crap shoot I don't think many serious artisans will be willing to take, and very poorly conceived on the part of the organizers.

I wonder if these problems are because the organizers are are themselves artists - frustrated no less, who have taken the matters of promotion into their own hands by creating these open venues, while unwittingly perpetuating the same type of incomprehensible process that segregates many fine works while foisting less desirables to the forefront and so on and so forth.

A phone call for clarity met an answering machine. Two emails have gone unanswered. What's to be done?XXKHT

The artist at her best – wild, passionate, rebellious, and human – is
often too large and truthful a creature for society's taste. The artist
at her most outlandish – profane, eccentric, even a little mad – is at
least as disquieting a figure. ~Eric Maisel

15 December 2007

Quite a while ago, I wondered aloud if life expectancy weren't related to the number of heartbeats a creature has. I noticed that small animals have rapid heartbeats while large animals have slower ones, and that the larger tend to have longer life expectancies than the smaller by degrees*.

For instance, the average weight of a rat is 250-300g and its life expectancy is 3-5 years; while an elephant weighs in at about a ton (depending on the breed and gender) with a life expectancy of roughly 60 years.

According to Geoffrey West, president of Santa Fe Institute, the thing the rat and the elephant (and every other animal with a heart) have in common is the number of times those hearts will beat in it's lifetime, which, under the best circumstances, is 1.5 billion.

It all goes back to efficiency of calorie burning and a host of other complex contributors, but the basic formula is 1.5 billion beats und das ist alles.

The study poses a new question - also one I've pondered in the past - if there are a finite number of heartbeats to be had, what does that mean in relation to cardio exercises? Are we, in performing these exercises slowing heart disease, but potentially shortening our life spans in the instance that we (specifically) weren't going to develop the disease in the first place? More importantly, wouldn't it be awesome if science developed better methods of prediction than what genetics have provided so far? Think of how much time could be saved not sweating at the gym. A viable excuse for laziness! Just the kind of absolution I could really put to use.

In addition to my early hypotheses of cardiorhythmic relativity, I have long imagined everything tied to a single mathematical equation. Not just bio-processes, but every process and consequent result, from cosmic/celestial to molecular.

*dogs seem to defy the size equation, with the large ones living far shorter lives on average than the smaller breeds. I think maybe it has to do with the larger breeds susceptibility to life shortening disease etc., but who knows? Even more curiously, lobster seem to defy the perils of aging, if not death by bisque, all together.

13 November 2007

It's funny, yes. But it's also eerily apropos of modern man's collective knowledge of his sustenance and it's origins.

A mania has overcome me.

I can precisely name the date and nearly the time: 26 May 2007; mid morningish.

The name of my obsession I shall call: Sustainorganilocavegegourmandism. I've got it BAD.

The date is significant as the very one in which I first put an edible plant into the earth with the hope that it would someday provide food for me. I had no idea at the time how life altering this simple act would be.

As I sit here in early November - mourning my garden - I find every excuse to try to recapture some small shred of the thrill that small 20x30 plot in the community gardens of The Intervale brought me every day this summer and into fall when we finally had to clear the last beet, carrot and leek from her sacred soil and leave her to rest for the long winter.

The full story of my transformation from food-source-ignorant foodie to would-be enlightened earth steward is another tale than the one I'll tell today - one I've written an article for that is currently for sale; however, in my reluctance to let it go for the season, I am now reading as much as I can about local produce, organic gardening all things relative to my newly adopted religion.

I started with Michael Pollen's, Omnivore's Dilemma. Actually, I received a copy of it last winter from B and I started it, got a third of the way through and then had to put it down because I was having nightmares about corn. CORN! CORN! CORN is the vegetable equivalent of Satan.

Corn is omnipresent; so deceptive as it insidiously works it's way in one way or another into everything (EVERYTHING) available to eat. With our help of course - it can't do it alone. Soy is close on it's tail and let's not get me started on CAFOs. (There will be way more on this topic in future rants, I am sure).

The fact is modern food systems SUCK. They are nothing more than a means of corporate profit at the expense of the planet's future, the well being of the farmers, and the health and longevity of the populace - especially Americans. A gazillion dollars are spent annually convincing us that convenience and price are the sole factors necessary to make food choices. We simply must have asparagus all year long. We cannot live without a tomato in January.

Or more often than not, a "food" that's more filler than sustenance. Junk food is little better than the corn based cattle feed that they can't digest and neither can you. Broken down to it's most basic elements, it's a surplus we're being coerced into consuming at the expense of our health and longevity.

It's clear that people have noticed and taken action as organics become more available - thanks in no small part to the efforts of writers like Pollen and Kingsolver and chefs like Alice Waters alongside small farmers everywhere. But it didn't take more than a decade for even these to become corrupted by the large scale producers who push the rules to their limits to stay "organic" by gov't standards and to shove the small scale local farmers out of the running.

The logic these advocates are promoting is that by using not just organic, but local ingredients as much as possible you are accomplishing a world of goodness not just for you and yours but for the future of , well, everything.

It's a BIG unpleasant statement, I know, but if you'd like to find out for yourself...I recommend these wonderful books on the topic currently on top seller lists. For a less shocking introduction, start with Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and then move on to Michael Pollen's, The Omnivore's Dilemma.

For the beginning of an investigative report on the American industrialized food system crisis and it's effect on our nation in terms of obesity etc...

Sending this into the ether, with hope...

XXKHT

"The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of
an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and
unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson"

12 November 2007

The Frankrijk was the scene of riots in the 1980s when homeless activist/anarchists took over the abandoned warehouse to live or "squat" in. Dutch laws were changed as a result, and currently no building within the city limits is allowed to remain empty for a certain period or people are legally allowed to seek shelter in it.

Sadly (and oddly) the only thing in English I could find on the subject online was a tiny blurb in Wiki's History of Amsterdam about the riots, but no mention of the Frankrijk as the centerpoint. Amsterdammers are well aware of it's history and the building remains a Squathaus to this day as well as a cultural center of a sort - popular with street, tag and political artists; most of the building and surrounding buildings are covered with street art.

11 November 2007

So, I happened upon this video of Alan Greenspan trying to explain to Jon Stewart about the Central Banking System a.k.a. The Federal Reserve.

Few people know that the Federal Reserve is a private bank, with shareholders just like any other bank, only they have the right to print money which it sells to the US Govt at interest, as well as the authority to regulate interest rates.

Sound like a conflict of interest? Why doesn't the gov't issue their own money? Good questions. This video explains it very well in terms even a school child can understand - but I warn you - you'll end up wondering just exactly who's really guarding our henhouse.

05 November 2007

I returned this afternoon to review yesterday's inaugural offering and the quotation conjured a new subject I've been eager to opine about.

I'm recently back from a two week odyssey with my beloved friend and aunt - who for privacy's sake shall henceforth be known as B - The visit started out routinely as a trip to Baltimore to help with a family business event where I was to prepare the food.

Afterwards we'd planned on making our way back to Vermont so that she could leaf peep, pick up some apples and cider and as much of our (IMHO) superior compost as would fit in her car to take back to her gardens Maryland.

Before we knew it, the routine nine hour trip turned into an extended foodie road trip up the Atlantic coast with stops in Hartford, CT, Boston, MA and Portland, ME.

Our first stop in Hartford was highly successful the first day. We stayed at the historic Goodwin Hotel and our restaurant of choice, The Trumbull Kitchen turned out to be a half a block from it - serendipity!

The Goodwin exceeded our expectations and TTK was adequate, though a bit loud with it's bar scene - the place literally being half bar. The food was solid and interesting however, and I would recommend it if any readers ever venture through Hartford.

The real reason we chose Hartford though was to visit Mark Twain House. I'm a huge fan of the man and own the Ken Burns documentary which I've seen a half a dozen times (at least). I was excited at the prospect of seeing the actual place having read and seen so much about it's unique architecture, and also being a history buff, I wanted to stand in the place where it all happened (or most of it). Coincidentally, I'd also lived in Heidelberg, Germany a place Twain had lived and wrote about extensively in A Tramp Abroad.

So here we were - at last - Mark Twain's house in Hartford; the only place he ever called home; the place where he raised his family; the place where he wrote Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and A Yankee in King Arthur's Court etc. I was twitching with excitement as we got out of the car.

The house is beautiful
just as I recalled from pictures though it pains me to say this as a photographer - and it's true a picture's worth a thousand words - images are hard pressed to do justice to scale (especially this one!). You can't know the scale of a place until you've stood there. That's the most difficult part of trying to represent architectural and landscapes photographically, but it's also a whole 'nother subject.

Which brings us to the subject I started out to write this afternoon - the one related to the subject title - regarding the docent at Mark Twain's House...

Although I do not recall her name, I will never forget the experience of having to endure the incredibly boorish presentation of her personal fantasies about the man and his family. Few references to actual history were made - even fewer to any relevant facts about the house and it's architecture. Most of the hour was spent listening to her gush forth her love of the man while she held up pictures of his wife and children and fantasized aloud about what their lives were like.

There were several teeth grinding/butt clenchingingly impossible incidents: after blathering endlessly her ideas about the intimacies of the family dynamic, she invited the group into the dining room stating that "only the ladies were invited in" because it had been set for a ladies luncheon and she was sorry for the men that they couldn't join us. I'm glad she remembered to tell us that the silver service on the table was Livy's own Tiffany pattern - a gift from her father and famously so.

From there to the library where she butchered the tale of Samuel's (Twain's real first name) ritual ad lib story to his children which always began with the first object on the mantelpiece and ended with the portrait of a cat wearing a ruff including, in order, each object along the way.

She followed this by asking us to hold hands in a circle so we could conjur....well, I don't know what she expected to conjur...Halloween was less than a week away and I suppose she thought it cute to include some occultish thing in her version of the Twain House Drama.

Upstairs she did an okay rendition of the history of the famous cherubic bed but along the way she kept challenging the captive audience to ask her questions to which no one dared reply. I think we were all so collectively disgusted with her - I for one just wished she'd shut up long enough for me to concentrate on my own memories of what I'd learned of the place so that I could take some enriched experience from the ordeal.

Finally a man in the audience asked if Mark Twain had any living relatives to which she replied, "Sadly, Mark Twain has no living ancestors." Then she went on to say that we were "all his ancestors now...those who came to learn about him and spend time in his house. That we were in fact, his great grandchildren and that he'd have been thrilled to realize how many great grandchildren he had left behind to adore him."

She also replied to B as "darlin." I had to try hard not to laugh out loud but I'm afraid I made an ass of myself just as badly as she did anyway with my eye rolling, nail biting and turning away in embarrassment.

She just rubbed me the wrong way and did her best however unwittingly to ruin the experience entirely. It didn't help that house rules dictate no photography inside the home (even flashless) and so I carried my heavy camera through the beautiful rooms, dead at my side, while I endured the grating prattle of the sadly ill-informed and pathetic performance of the docent that I'm almost positive would have drawn exactly the same reaction from the man himself.

He spent a life time calling out phonies and if you've decided by now that I'm an overly sensitive pain (you're right) but think of it this way...People visit that house from all over the world and most will only visit once. How dare she make it about herself. How dare she hold an audience who traveled far and paid $14 bucks to walk through hoping to learn something only to find themselves trapped in a one hour soliloquy of a petty little docent who rather than taking the time to learn and relate relevant and interesting facts, chose instead to BS her way through the presentation promoting nothing more than a second rate performance of her own imagination.

That's what blogs are for!XKHTXp.s. more on the trip in a future installation